Blog

April 18, 2013

EMAC Lab Readies New Release

The EMAC Lab, formerly the Mobile Lab, which has previously created projects such as Undetweetable and Enemygraphis working on a new software project, which should be ready for release next month. The project, called Github Syllabus, is designed to allow college instructors to quickly and easily share copies of their syllabi on the Github platform. Github, was originally designed as a mechanism to allow programmers to quickly and easily share source code files and collaborate. However, recently the platform’s capabilities have attracted attention from academics in the humanities and social sciences as well. This is mostly because of how the github platform handles files. It stores information about every revision made to a file, allowing the evolution of a complex document, even one contributed to by multiple authors, to be recovered. It also allows users to “fork” files, creating a new version for themselves with a link back to the original version. This allows for flexible collaboration and sharing of materials. University instructors are interested in using these collaboration and sharing functions to work together on teaching and research materials. At present, uploading material to github in a format that it uses gracefully can be difficult and time consuming. Github Syllabus is designed to help with that. It is a plugin for the popular WordPress blogging platform that allows syllabi shared using this platform to be quickly and easily transferred to github. As many faculty use WordPress for classes, this connection will help them more readily make use of the github platform. Look for Github Syllabus, the latest creation from EMAC Lab, in the coming weeks!